Waiting to GoThree more die, 1,000 more await execution in the deadly lottery
resulting from the Philippines' hapless war on crime. After becoming the first country in
Asia to abolish the death penalty, the Philippines became one of the few anywhere to bring
it back. But so far, many wonder whether Manila has the judicial maturity to manage life
and death decisions. An inside look at the depressing Death Row

ON JULY 8, JOSEPHA MORALLOS WATCHED HER HUSBAND DIE.

He
was strapped to a black gurney, his arms stretched out on padded slats, as if bound to a
cross. "Have courage for the sake of our children," said Jesus Morallos. His
voice, picked up by a dangling microphone, sounded metallic as it crackled through the
speakers in the viewing gallery. Seated on a white, plastic chair, Josepha, mother of
three, watched her husband's life flicker away as a cocktail of sodium pentothal,
pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride coursed through his veins. Jesus's eyes
fluttered shut for the last time. The curtains closed.
And so, at 3:39 p.m., Jesus Morallos, 32, became the fourth person to be executed in
the Philippines this year. Two other convicts also died at in an
outbuilding at New Bilibid Prison that day. Dante Piandiong, 27, was terminated 58 minutes
earlier. Fifty-eight minutes after Jesus, Archie Bulan, 24, died in the same corrugated
metal shack. Outside the prison there were prayers and cheers. A hundred or so
death-penalty opponents, led by religious leaders, joined hands with relatives of the
doomed and prayed for executions to stop. Others prayed, too. Twenty men and women twirled
rosaries, eyes shut, hands clasped to heaven, beseeching the merciful Lord to please, dear
God, let the court-sanctioned killings continue. No one knows if the Lord listened, but in
the space of less than three hours Manila had executed more convicts than it has in nearly
a quarter century.

After watching her husband die, 35-year-old Josepha staggered down the red steps of the
Lethal Injection Center, crying hysterically as she grappled with her new status as the
nation's latest and - for 58 minutes anyway - most celebrated widow. Her misery soon will
be forgotten, probably even before other convicts head to the death chamber, maybe later
this month. But the repercussions will continue to reverberate through the devoutly
Catholic nation that was the first in Asia to abolish the death penalty in 1987, but one
of the few countries anywhere to bring it back, six years later. President after president
has advocated the ultimate penalty. Yet despite widespread public support, death sentences
have proven far easier to decree than to execute. As a result, the Philippines has a Death
Row population that, among democratic nations, is second only to that of the United
States.

Far more was at stake last week than the lives of three men convicted of robbing a
jeepney in 1994 and killing a passenger who happened to be an off-duty police officer. The
case ignited protests from human-rights groups, in the Philippines and abroad, who charge
that the trio - protesting their innocence to the end - were tortured into making
confessions, and were improperly tried and represented. Even as Josepha retrieved her
husband's body, religious leaders were attacking the punishment as "cheapening the
value of human life" and "fomenting the spirit of vengeance and hatred."

Questions about other cases have prompted a small but growing number of congressmen to
press for an immediate review of death-penalty laws; they worry about inadequate checks
and balances in the judicial system. A day before the triple executions, the Supreme Court
overturned the death penalty for a deaf-mute convicted of rape. During his trial, the
judge had overlooked the fact that the man could neither hear nor speak. The hubbub has
made the president pause. Joseph Ejercito Estrada, who built careers in acting and
politics by acting tough on crime, has wavered each time a man is due to die. Since the
first execution in February, he has granted seven reprieves.

WHILE SOCIETY AT LARGE CANNOT achieve a consensus on the ultimate penalty, there is one
place where people are unanimously against capital punishment - a big white building
surrounded by fencing a few hundred meters from the death chamber. This is Death Row,
where, depending on who you ask, between 897 and 1,069 inmates await their fate.

New Bilibid seems more like a barangay in
the Philippines than a prison. In the sprawling prison grounds, vendors sell fruit,
produce, eggs and household plastic ware. Burgers sizzle at Golden Hut Hamburger, while
Cokes are racked at ramshackle stands beside a dozen rough-hewn pool tables, all handmade
by inmates. Soaring voices sing the psalms at no less than 13 churches in the Maximum
Security compound alone. They find no shortage of converts. Many convicts credit the
supplemental church rations rather than newfound spiritual zeal for the high conversion
rate. Hawkers circulate with fake Rayban sunglasses. Guards, sporting the "Cool Hand
Luke" look, are customers. Basketballs bounce on prison courts as families munch
pansit at adjoining picnic grounds. Benches and tables are painted in proud swirls. Huge
murals on the sides of buildings resemble those in every Filipino town, extolling the
local leadership, in this case "mayors" and gang bosses who run the various
cellblocks. Prison craftsmen offer inventive wares: gaudy Last Supper paintings, wooden
cigarette boxes, boats in bottles and remarkable animal figurines made from melted plastic
cups.

There are vegetable gardens, chicken coops, ducks and geese wandering the dirt prison
yard. Mothers, wives, girlfriends and children have free rein on visiting days. Except in
the dark hole known as Building One - Death Row.

The place reeks of gas burners, sewage, sweat and fear. "I could not ignore the
darkness and the stench," one inmate wrote in his diary. "You see, being in
Death Row is like being inside a bottle painted black. But you learn to live with it, to
search for some light. Otherwise, you will lose your soul." Rueben Montilla, 26,
spent three years on death row for a marijuana conviction that was later reduced to life
in prison. In his yellow flip-flops and shorts, Montilla looks more like a kid headed to
the beach, instead of nowhere, ever again. "Being closed off," he says,
"is the worst thing."

While the rest of the maximum-security inmates roam the prison's inner sanctum,
shooting pool, playing cards, buying and selling what they can, Death Row is locked down
and isolated. Its three-meter-wide concrete veranda is enclosed by chicken wire. There is
just enough room to stand among the laundry. Hundreds of men mill about, smoking
cigarettes and queuing for water, a precious commodity. Others pass time on the second
floor, leaning through the window grates. They can leave only to attend hearings, meet
with attorneys and, eventually, die. "We all sit in our cells," says one inmate,
"and wait the long wait."

When Rito Guinda was sentenced, he couldn't
stop thinking about death. He couldn't eat. He couldn't sleep. "But you
change," he says. "There is nothing you can do but wait for your judgment day. On
Death Row there is no other way. You learn to accept it and get by. After a while you just
become resigned, even if you are innocent." Guinda is one of the lucky ones; his drug
conviction was commuted to life.
There is no official Death Row for women, but 18 female convicts are waiting to die.
They are incarcerated at a facility in Mandaluyong, a Manila suburb, where they cut each
other's hair, work on their makeup and stitch together placemats. Death Row is just
another room in what looks like an old high school. Inmates lounge around in pajamas on
tiny cots. With its bunk beds and posters of film and basketball stars, the place looks
like a sorority sleep-over. The women are mostly young. Soon, some may die. "She
talks of it all the time," says attorney Rachel Ruelo, superintendent of the Women's
Correctional Institute. She is speaking of Josephina Esparas, who could make history next
month as the first woman in the Philippines to be executed. "She says: 'Mom, it's
near.' She says that all the time," confides Ruelo. "She cooks, she makes
rosaries. But death is wearing on her. She's sick a lot."

IN THE PHILIPPINES, inmates pay for their crimes in many ways. Cash-rich convicts buy
deluxe cells with fans, televisions, stereos. Editha Matignas, 56, president of the
Families of Death Row Inmates, has gone into debt to pay for her son Jemreich's trial and
to keep him comfortable inside. His cell cost $68, plus $325 for the remodeling. So far
she has spent over $3,000 in legal fees, but would gladly shell out a promised $1,350
bonus to the lawyer who can get her only son acquitted.

Everything is available for a price. "Except," says one prisoner,
"justice." Actually, that too. Despite the lofty goal of Act 7659 - to attack
corruption in high places, target drug lords, murderers and kidnap gangs - enforcement is
clearly aiming low. "These are all poor people in Death Row," says Maria Diokno,
head of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), which handles most last-ditch appeals for
condemned men. Father Silvino "Jun" Borres, director of the Philippines Jesuit
Prison Service, calls the Row a "home for the poor." A survey last year of 425
Death Row inmates showed that most earned less than $6 a day when they were arrested.
Three-quarters of them were farmers, truckers, laborers and so on. Few can afford the $30
that attorneys charge to attend the death sentence hearings.

Diokno estimates that only 12%-15% of those charged in capital cases can afford private
representation. "And most of these are drug cases or foreigners." Instead, Death
Row inmates are served by a severely under-funded Public Attorney's Office (PAO), often
with disastrous results. Condemned men say they are railroaded into prison with limited or
no representation. FLAG cites cases in which public attorneys advise clients to plead
guilty to obtain a lighter sentence, unaware that the charges carry a mandatory death
sentence. PAO acknowledges that its 877 attorneys receive no special training on capital
cases. It also notes that besides handling death-sentence cases, public defenders are
involved in more than 350,000 civil and criminal cases each year, as well as millions of
consultations, filings and mediation matters. They earn about $400 a month.

A 1980s crime wave prompted authorities to reinstate the death penalty as a deterrent
to murder, kidnapping and treason. Few on Death Row possess such a resume. More than half
are in for rape. Anxious to appear tough on crime, lawmakers recently added 46 capital
offenses to the books - one of the broadest codes in the civilized world. Possession of
750g of marijuana can be a capital crime; one Death Row resident was convicted for growing
seven plants. He fainted upon learning his sentence.

In the Philippines the lowest courts impose the death penalty. Critics say its
reintroduction set off a "death rush" among justices eager to appease the public
appetite for executions. Rumors circulate of a "Guillotine Club" of justices who
hand down death sentences. Its so-called founder, Maximano Asuncion, sentenced the first
inmate executed this year, Leo Echegaray. The judge died before the verdict was carried
out.

Echegaray wasn't meant to be the first person executed in the Philippines since 1976.
Fernando Galera was. Sentenced to die for rape and robbery in April 1994, Galera could
have been killed as early as 1997, but at the last minute the Supreme Court ruled that he
was innocent. His case is common enough. Capital cases receive automatic review. From 1995
to 1998, the Supreme Court ruled on 55 cases in which the death penalty had been decreed.
There were six acquittals, 22 affirmed sentences, 22 reductions and five instances when
the case was referred back to the lower court.

Galera is suing for restitution, but the court can't return the years he spent on Death
Row. The judicial process was no consolation to Carlos Gorbilla, a corn vendor who last
month leapt to his death minutes after being sentenced to death for rape. "This is
not like a state with well-defined procedures, standards, safeguards," says attorney
Diokno. "Here, it's all in the process of development." Even at the Department
of Justice no one can agree on how many men are on Death Row, their status, or how the
review process is handled.

Still, to date, far more men have received last-minute stays than lethal injection. The
reprieves come from Estrada, who maintains unwavering support for the death penalty even
as his daughter Jackie, 32, secretly visits prisons to work for its repeal. Nobody knows
how Erap reaches his life-and-death decisions, but the results have become a hot topic
internationally. On June 25, Estrada announced that rapist Eduardo Agbayani would die that
day. Forty-five minutes later the president wavered. Erap had received an appeal from
Bishop Teodoro Bacani. Estrada, at home at the time, called the injection room. He got a
busy signal, then a fax tone. By the time an aide raced to the official palace hotline,
Agbayani was dead.

A special panel was established to guide Estrada through the reprieve process.
Secretary of Justice Serafin Cuevas sits on the three-member panel. Two days before last
week's executions Cuevas was unsure where the review was headed. He has, however, attended
all the executions so far, except for Agbayani's on June 25. That was Cuevas's birthday.

In April, Estrada granted a 60-day reprieve for DNA tests that could conclusively prove
the innocence or guilt of three men sentenced for a rape they say they did not commit. The
defense had been requesting the tests from the start, but the court refused to indulge
them. For his part, Cuevas says the tests are unnecessary and, at $405 apiece, a costly
precedent. The problem with the execution process, the justice secretary says, is that it
takes too long. "There is no need to wait one year for the executions," Cuevas
says, "when the judgment is already final." He adds: "But the president
wants to be at peace with his conscience, he has said this most clearly. Besides, we worry
that the Philippines will be branded as the death-penalty capital of the world."

Little chance of that. Most Asian nations sanction capital
punishment. As in the Philippines, more people than not favor executing hardened
criminals. Jessica Soto, national director of Amnesty International's Manila office,
guesses that two-thirds of Filipinos back the death penalty. That is about the level of
support gauged by an informal phone-in survey conducted recently by Adrian Sisson, who
hosts a daily radio program, Broadcasters Bureau. "People really have the notion that
it's a deterrent," says Sisson, who is also an attorney and death penalty opponent.
"But you can go back in time. When they hung pickpockets in England, pickpockets
worked the crowds."

Studies worldwide have failed to connect the death penalty with drops in crime. The
U.S., with the developed world's largest Death Row population and highest execution rate,
also claims some of the greatest rates of homicide, robbery and rape. Philippine records
show that the number of robberies and murders fell sharply after peaking in the late
1980s; executions were not re-introduced until 1993. "It's an utter illusion that the
problems of society can be solved by executions," says Father Borres, whose group has
become a powerful advocate for prisoners and their families. His concern: "The time
will come when executions become ordinary and nobody even notices them going on."

WHAT THE PUBLIC REALLY WANTS TO SEE is a big crime boss go to the chamber. "The
chances of that," says FLAG attorney Jose Diokno, "are nil. We haven't even seen
those kinds of conviction." New Bilibid Prison has had its share of celebrated
inmates, including ex-congressman Romeo Jalosjos. Convicted of raping a minor, he became
notorious for his prison lifestyle. The congressman built comfortable quarters in jail,
hired bodyguards and constructed the Maximum Tennis Club. His treatment made news
worldwide and prompted a clampdown and ban on interviews with Death Row inmates. On the
tennis court, attended by guards in special white outfits, well-heeled prisoners continue
to hit balls as they await parole. The congressman will not be visiting the Lethal
Injection Chamber. He got life.

Who will be executed next? One candidate is Pablito Andan, convicted of rape and
murder, whose initial date passed nearly a year ago. Or perhaps the first woman will go
next. Esparas could be executed as early as Aug. 6. She was caught at the airport with a
small quantity of shabu (methamphetamine). Some say her husband put the drug in her
luggage. No one in the prison - guard or inmate - wants to see her die. "We're
supposed to be in the business of rehabilitation," says superintendent Ruelo.
"We can't rehabilitate a dead person."

Or perhaps the next to die will be Edwin
Mendoza and brothers Jury and Ricardo Andal, whose 60-day reprieve for rape and murder
runs out next month. Their lives hang in the balance as authorities tussle over $405 DNA
tests that may never be done. "My husband was with me when the crime took
place," says Modesta Correlos Andal, wife of Ricardo. His sentence is hers, too. The
family sold their land to pay for Ricardo's defense. Her four children stay at home, while
she spends her life outside the prison gates, waiting. "I'm hoping the truth will
prevail," says Modesta. "I cannot think beyond that. If he is acquitted, then we
will start a new life."

If not, then one day, soon after sunrise, they will come for Ricardo Andal and tell him
to prepare to die. To enjoy one last meal, and pray with a priest, if he desires. Eight
hours later, he will be led to a small, metal room, where as many as 33 people will watch
through glass windows as lethal poisons are injected into his blood stream. Ricardo will
breathe his last. Then the curtains will close, and Modesta will leave weeping. Another
widow in the Philippines' ongoing war on crime.

Garrote Execution. Philippines (1901)

Act No. 3815 - An Act Revising The
Penal Code And Other Penal Laws (December 8, 1930). Title Two - Crimes
Against The Fundamental Laws Of The State. Chapter One - Arbitrary
Detention Or Expulsion, Violation Of Dwelling, Prohibition,
Interruption, And Dissolution Of Peaceful Meetings And Crimes Against
Religious Worship. Article 133 - Offending the religious feelings. - The
penalty of arresto mayor in its maximum period to prision correccional
in its minimum period shall be imposed upon anyone who, in a place
devoted to religious worship or during the celebration of any religious
ceremony shall perform acts notoriously offensive to the feelings of the
faithful.

Article 133 of 1930 vintage harks back to old Spanish law and punishment
and just short of 1898 when Rizal faced death by firing squad and
closer enough to 1901 when garrote was a state-sanctioned method for
terminating the life of a criminal offender. I would bet my best looking
fifty-peso bill that Carlos Celdran, in a little over a century ago,
would have been sentenced to death by garrote.
he garrote is a method of execution "no longer sanctioned by law in any
country though training in its use is still carried out in the French
Foreign Legion. The garrote is a device that strangles a person to death
(as in the photograph above). It can also be used to break a person’s
neck. The device was used in Spain until it was outlawed in 1978 with
the abolition of the death penalty. It normally consisted of a seat in
which the prisoner was restrained while the executioner tightened a
metal band around his neck until he died. Some versions of the garrote
incorporated a metal bolt which pressed in to the spinal chord, breaking
the neck. This spiked version is known as the Catalan garrote. The last
execution by garrote was José Luis Cerveto in October 1977. Andorra was
the last country in the world to outlaw its use, doing so in 1990.﻿" |
Kwentong Kababalaghan http://bit.ly/9ivdUD

The garrote is a word of Spanish origin describing an instrument of
torture and death, often a hand-held weapon made of chain, rope, nylon
wire, fish wire, guitar string, telephone cord, or piano wire, used for
strangling. It was often used in assassination and in military practice
as it can be effectively carried out in relative silence.

The original design of the Spanish garrote was a rope and stick that can
be used to tighten and compress the neck or limb for the purpose of
torture, assassination, and even to re-animate a victim. Way back in the
day, the subject was hit with a club to put him out (much like they do
in cattle slaughterhouses), before meeting his death, his neck wrapped
in a metal band attached to a crank and wheel for speedy suffocation.